Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children

by Roberta Michnick Golinkoff

Mastery of facts at an early age, they claim, leads to bigger and better brains, and better brains lead to better jobs with higher earnings and more discretionary wealth. There are actually toys out there like Brainy Baby that boast a separate DVD for the right brain and the left, even though neuroscientists have all but debunked the theory that a person, let alone a baby, can be right-brained or left-brained. Then there is the multimillion-dollar revenue from products like Your Baby Can Read. Those of us who study early language and literacy are known to talk back to the television when ads like that come on. “No, your baby CAN’T read!” we retort. Like the beloved stuffed animal in Margery Williams’s Velveteen Rabbit or Woody in the movie Toy Story, the classic toys have moved to the back shelf. Parents don’t want to buy a Slinky or a package of Play-Doh that doesn’t have obvious educational value. As parents, we pass by the spatial learning embedded in forming clay and constructing train sets. We whiz by the storytelling and language learning that naturally envelops us when playing with toy castles where we encounter crenellations and knights in shining armor who must traverse the moat. We want to optimize the learning potential of our child’s every waking moment. Who wouldn’t want a fast-food learning recipe straight from the box that will set your child’s trajectory for study at the Ivy Leagues? The problem is that filling heads with facts is not the secret to success ...

Skills current kids will need for effective value creation in their future